My TBR shelf(sort of)

(P.S TBR-To Be Read. That’s me, keeping things simple by essentially shortening them to forms no sane human can understand)

I read books. I also don’t read books.I also start reading some books and not complete them. The struggle is real.

I’ve been doing that for a while now(not completing a book). It all began one fine day when I started reading ‘the shining’ by Stephen King. For those of you who don’t know, Stephen King is one of the greatest writers of the ‘horror’ genre.The shining is a scary book. A really scary book. So naturally I had to read it. So I procured it and started reading. I was half way through when I realized something. I couldn't continue. I was much to terrified to actually finish the book. So I put it down meaning to read it later when I’m a bit more mellowed down. But I never did. That’s when I realised something. You can actually put a book down and then resume reading it AFTER a while. For various reasons of course. There’s just a small problem. The suspense would probably kill you. You can read the rest of the story in Wikipedia but that would be cheating(kind of) and I’m VERY serious when it comes to books.That was the start of a shameful guilt ridden unwillingly boarded emotional roller coaster ride- The TBR concept.

That's one hell of a ride

Just in time too as my inner demon wanted to read classics. And one should not finish a classic in record time. Well I couldnt anyway. I finished ‘picture of dorian grey’ easily enough though. it’s obvious. The hero murders people so yeah. But I couldnt get through ‘pride and prejudice’ (argh the guilt) and I’m too proud to look it up. So now it’s on the shelf of doom along with ‘a tale of 2 cities,which I havent even started(not fair to the poor bugger). The struggle is freaking real. And then there’s ‘Moby dick’. It’s about a whale.God knows why I even started this book. Now I’m a few pages through and it’s as boring as my school’s annual report. 

Sometimes I surprise even myself

                                        

                                  I have a kindle and honestly it’s way easier to finish books on it because you can’t actually see how much more you have to read. IT’s salvation for people like me. But my mother refuses point blank to pay for my obsession-be it an ebook or a regular one-and so it’s up to me to magically find places where I can download ebooks for free. Let me put thos out there; I am horrible when it comes to looking stuff up. This is how I google. One can hardly expect me to ‘find’ books in the vast spiralling vortex of terror(a.k.a. The internet). But I have managed to download about 15 books to my kindle-a pretty impressive feat if I say so myself. 
I’m a fast reader. I literally skim through pages and just plain skip the paragraphs that describe the landscape and other boring stuff the first time. It takes me an average of 2 days to finish a book if I spend the whole day for that sole purpose. So I ought to finish 15 books in a jiffy. And then what will I do? I can’t even. This is how I’m going to die- broken hearted from not having enough books to read. Sigh. 

So true.

                                                  Ah well, better than being Dismembered By A Captive Orca Whale At SeaWorld , or drowning while trying to embrace the moon or drowning while trying to give a titanic pose or dying by tripping on your own beard (the above said thing are actually true and not just works of fiction made by me to enhance my awesomeness).

Huehuehue.

The journey to the cosmos-Part 2

Let’s move on to the actual point of these posts-space travel. Space travel,as is obvious, isn't easy(even traversing through Chennai’s traffic is not easy so go figure). The first thing we need is to locate the destination. That would be our nearest star system Proxima centauri. It’s a three star system(it has 3 stars. Duh). The first two star are in a binary system. That means they move together. Their orbits are closely bound thus rendering the two stars uninhabitable. The third star, though, is up for consideration.That is where our space ship is going to go. 

                                   

                                    

PROXIMA CENTAURI

Our destination is fixed. Let’s move on to the actual design of the space ship. The space ship must be able to withstand asteroids and other fatal things that come hurling at it every second. There’s not much we can do but hope nothing strikes the ship we’re pretty sure nothing is light enough yet strong enough to withstand a giant rock coming at it with an unimaginable speed. So the material for the spaceship is pretty basic. Nothing special. It should be modelled just like the other space ships, only bigger as it will be holding people. 

Now the problems arise. People. They need food,water etc. to survive for about 50 years because remember, it would take a spaceship 50 years to reach andromeda if it were to travel at the speed of light. Just imagine what would happen to the human body if it exists in a non gravity state for 50 years. It would hardly be fit for anything let alone start a colony in a new planet.Our bodies are designed to withstand gravity. Without that the bones would start disintegrating as the need for them reduces (bones absorb impact. They will be no impact in a weightlessness situation).There’s a huge risk of cardiovascular diseases and your heart has to work harder. The only probable solution is exercise. Everyone on board needs to follow a strict exercise routine(yeah right). The other probable and effective solution is the generate artificial gravity. How can one do that? By centrifugal force of course. This is the force that keeps you in your seat in a roller coaster ride. So lets say the ship has a constantly rotating hollow circular band or the likewise. Now if the speed of rotation is perfect, it produces centrifugal force which basically pushes the object(humans) from the centre to the outer surface of the ring and keeps them in an upright position, much like gravity.

                           

                             Imagine something like this.

Now the fuel. There are only 2 things that could possibly help us travel approximately in the speed of light: hydrogen and antimatter.

Hydrogen: The sun gets its energy from fusion reactions. When 2 hydrogen atoms collide, they generate an enormous amount of energy. This energy can be harnessed as fuel to help us travel fast(just fast mind you. It would probably take us 70 years if we use hydrogen)

Antimatter: it’s,obviously, the opposite of matter.Just like hydrogen antimatter also produces energy when it’s molecules collide with one another. This is what we shall be using. But there’s a teeny problem.As you might have guessed, a huge amount of energy will be produced when antimatter and matter get too friendly. When I say a huge amount I mean a REALLY  huge amount enough to wipe off any traces of us.They only way to stop this spectacular destruction of mankind is to contain antimatter using magnetic force. We haven't yet developed the technology to generate such a huge magnetic field that too inside a spaceship filled with humans.So that’s that.

Space has radiation. I mean once you venture out into the unknown you get bombarded with all kinds of radiation the most of it being gamma rays. They are harmful,especially to humans. The earth protects itself by generating a magnetic field which deflects the gamma rays. But as mentioned above our tiny spaceship doesnt have the capacity to generate such a strong and powerful magnetic field. The best and the simplest way is to form a layer of water (yes. Water is a great “radiation protector”)outside the spaceship(much like a water jacket ).The water that is used by the people can be used for this purpose. This is probably already too much information to comprehend. So I’ll leave you to it.

P.S woohoo! I included pictures. Hope you’re excited.

The journey to the cosmos-part 1

(Sorry for the lame heading).We all know what happened to the dinosaurs. We still aren't sure what exactly “ka boomed” them but we do know for a fact that they are currently not roaming the surface of the Earth( sorry Jurassic park fans). That’s good news right? Who would want to rub cheeks with big ugly lizards? Now the bad news. Scientists are sure that the same fate will befall us too somewhere in the near future( you were better off not knowing that but hey, at least now you can enjoy eating unhealthy fried food saying” we may not be around for long. So I shall eat the shit out of this Lays”). It’s the Cosmos. Anything can happen in the cosmos at any time of the day. Seriously. Dozens of stars are created and destroyed every second. Millions of meteors strike our Earth everyday. If even one cheeky bugger manages to brave the Earth’s atmosphere we all will probably be doomed. So is there no way for this awesome, highly(ahem) intelligent species to survive? Is our fate resting upon our luck?

Well no. It’s obvious isn't it? If something is destroyed/exhausted we move on to another. So if we colonize enough planets then humanity is bound to survive any apocalypse of any planet. We will theoretically be immortal. But immortality comes with a price. That price is braving all odds. And there are lots of odds. Lots.

Before we get to the difficult part lets get the easier one out of the way. Let’s “refresh” our basic knowledge about the universe. Our universe has billions of galaxies. Ours is the milky way galaxy. Our galaxy has billions of stars and each star has ‘god knows how many’ planets orbiting them. Our Sun is one such star. The sun is a yellow dwarf(yes its a dwarf). The hydrogen atoms which make up the sun collide with each other causing nuclear fusion which generates huge amount of energy. 9 planets orbit the sun(yes Pluto was finally allowed to enter the “What’s the best planet in the solar system?” competition). Most of the planets have moons orbiting them. 

We know enough about Earth. Lets talk about Mars for a change. Mars was one just like earth. It had water and atmosphere and stuff. So what happened? Big objects generate magnetic fields around them just like gravitation. The smaller the planet, the lesser time it takes for the magnetic energy generated to be spent. This is what happened to Mars( it’s smaller than Earth). The universe if filled with harmful radiation and gamma rays. With no magnetic field to protect it, Mars was destroyed by radiation. It’s atmosphere was wiped out and without atmosphere, all it’s water evaporated leaving behind the red desert that we now see. But don’t worry. The Earth will keep generating magnetic fields for a very long time.
This is probably already too much to ponder over. So I’ll leave you to it. The interesting stuff is yet to come.
P.S  I “acquired” this information from ‘how the universe works’ in discovery channel. So if you have been living under a rock or if you watch discovery only for bear grylles or if you get discovery only in Tamil and are so fed up and annoyed to hear the narrator saying vin veli mandalam (universe) or graham(planets) that you never set your eyes(ears in this case) on the channel, then this post is for you.

If,by chance, you are awesome and  have watched a few episodes of the above mentioned show then forgive me if I got something wrong or if I have exaggerated something because I do not have the time to re watch the show just for you(sorry but it’s what I do). Go read about cats or something.

I'M BACK.

I can basically hear a lot(I hope I'm allowed to exaggerate) of you sighing inwardly but yes. I'm actually back. Well technically I wasn't gone so I couldn't be back but you get my point. Er that's it for this post. Yes. I actually decided to NOT rant. I did write a post AND I did save it but I lost it in the depths of Mordor. Sorry. Shouldn't have gone there. My bad. So onward with the blogging.

How I make tea

Tea is something I can’t live without. So I’m compelled to make it 3 times a day. I’ve decided to share with you my tea recipe albeit with some other totally pointless and random stuff that I somehow end up doing. For those of you who are viewing this post in the hopes that I will be giving you the recipe for making tea, I’m going to be a good girl and say that you shall not be disappointed. Just consult an expert first or you might blow up your house.

	How it’s supposed to be done	How I do it
1)	Turn on the gas stove.	Go into the kitchen. Complain about how messy it is but do nothing to make it less messy. Then go the LPG cylinder and turn the knob this way and that and finally figure out the right way . Take the lighter and light the stove (in not less than 3 tries).
2)	Take a vessel. Keep it on the stove.	Rummage through the cupboard and choose the nearest one(pff.Easy).Keep it on the stove lopsidedly.
3)	Pour about 1 ¼ cups of water	Fill 2 cups with water. Spill some down. Curse the world. Recover. Drink the water from 1 cup. Fill it again (not exactly ¼ because how in the world am I supposed to keep track of that? It’s water. Come on)
4)	Put the ‘tea powder’ (about 3 small spoonful) in the water and allow it to boil till the volume of water left is approximately ½ that of its original volume. The aroma of the tea should now fill the room.	Take a spoon. Decide not to use it because it’s too big which will lead to an error in the measurements (10 points for trying). Search for a smaller spoon. I won’t find it. Use the bigger spoon anyway. Spill some tea powder down. It mixes with the already spilt water and becomes even more disgusting. Curse myself now. Allow the water to boil. Curse about how hot the kitchen is. Decide to go stand under the fan. Hear a sizzling sound and realize that I’ve let the water boil for too long, so much so that the amount of water now left is just about a pint. Vow NEVER to make tea again. Ah yes. The aroma. All that I’m able to smell now is my sweat and my frustration.
5)	Turn the stove off and pour about a cup of milk (if you want your tea to be ‘strong’, pour little milk else pour a lot of milk). Use a strainer to remove the tea powder. Put sugar as per your requirement.	Turn the stove off without anymore mishaps. Pour some milk. Taste the tea. Spit it out realizing it’s too hot. Howl for my mother to set things right. She howls back saying “you started it. You must be the one to finish it”. Damn it. Wait for the molten lava to cool. Add sugar. Taste it again. Realize that more milk needs to be added. Add milk. Realize that more sugar needs to be added. Do the usual swearing routine. Add sugar. Search for the strainer and successfully find it. Do the needful. Pour a little bit of it down again.
6)	Your tea ought to be ready now. Enjoy it.	The tea is ready but the kitchen is not. So try my level best to do something. Fail. Accept my life and try to move on. Get out of the kitchen and drink my tea. Realize it’s the sweet nectar of life and heaven. Congratulate myself and wallow in self praise. Decide to break my vow. Hear my mom screaming at me to clean the kitchen. Wallow in self pity.

 P.S. Just so you  know, the tea usually turns out to be pretty good (even by my standards).

Why I don’t(can’t) watch movies.

I can hear you all questioning my sanity(and my honesty) but just hear me out.  My mother tongue is Tamil. I have the option to switch between Tamil films and Hindi films (I don’t mean to brag but I've finished all the Hindi exams and am currently a Hindi pandit. ahem.) and yet I don’t watch films nor have I watched many(now short films are a different story). Now allow me to explain myself.

1) I don’t watch films because I’m too lazy to go the theater.  What’s the point?  Wait for a week and you get to see it in the comfort of your own sweet home. You try going to a theater on the first day release of a Rajini(sir) film and come out unscathed with your hearing and limbs intact.You’ll know what I mean. Trust me. I've tried. I know you want to get the ‘theater experience’ and stuff but you don’t have to ‘experience’ it every time a movie releases right?.Maybe it’s just me. We’ll never know will we?

2)I watch films ONLY if they’re on TV and ONLY if their show timings don’t interfere with my sleep schedule(nap time included). We have a set top box. And this is really bad because you can now choose which channels to not watch. So my parents don’t pay for the English movies channel no matter how much I beg them to(no surprise there). So that’s out.

3) What’s that? Watch videos on the internet? Okay. My internet is as slow as me doing a Chemical equilibrium problem. So if the movie is for 3 hours it takes me triple the time to download it or watch it online (1 hour for the website to load, 1 hour for the link to load, 2 hours for me to decide whether or not I actually want to watch this movie after all this inner and outer turmoil, 1 hour for me to go find my laptop charger and the rest of the time for it to buffer/download. You do the math).All hell breaks loose if my internet gets cut in the middle which, you guessed it, happens all the time.

3) I’m very picky. I don’t like love stories. I don’t like sad movies that make me cry every time I see a character who make it a point to either deliver emotional dialogues every time they appear or need to have very emotional background music every time they appear. I don’t watch superhero movies (they’re too super hero-ey). If I don’t like the movie in the first half hour then I won’t watch it. So my fussiness eventually leads me into rejecting most of the movies they show on TV.

4) If a movie is too serious I’ll skip the middle part. As a result I will be so busy figuring out where these extra characters came from and trying to patch up the story-line with what little information I have that I’ll end up not paying attention to the climax. Sad.

5) Interruptions.  My family has decided that the best time to watch shows on TV is when I’m 2 minutes into a movie. It ALWAYS happens irrespective of the day or time. And when I finally do get to watch it, it’s either finished or a major chunk of it is over.

Now you know why I prefer to stare at a wall than watch a movie. Who can I blame?
But even after all these I did get around to watching a handful of movies in the theater(most of them were Harry Potter movies and the recent one was Tenaliraman.Oops.Too much information). But I’m going to take a chance this time. This time when 'Kochadaiiyaan' releases (if you haven’t guessed it yet, I’m a huge Rajini Fan) I WILL watch it third day itself in the theater. Yes. My left leg isn't too important anyway.

Embarrassing stories part 1

By now all of you might know how interesting my life is. But even I have some (ok ok many) ‘special’ moments where I had wished the Earth would swallow me or that I’d become invisible somehow.
Needless to say the above methods didn't (and don’t) work. So I had to face the consequences of the things my stupid self did.
1) This happened in 7^th. It was social period and we were doing maps. I tore pieces of paper and put it on my neighbour’s head.  After a few minutes my teacher noticed it. I guess he was in a bad mood because he made her stand up and shouted at us asking who did this dastardly act. Come on. It was paper. Sheesh!  Being the badass that I am I didn’t own up. So he took her to the principal(?). Then I saw this guy look daggers at me. He came up and asked me in front of the whole class why I hadn’t confessed. I innocently asked him what he was talking about. Then he said he saw me do it. Then another girl said she saw me do it. Then another. I was speechless. So I ran out of the classroom crying. And now whenever that guy sees me he never forgets to remind me of the ‘bad thing I did in 7^th’. Honestly people.

2) I used to go to this English class when I was in 4^th. One fine day we(me and my cousin brother) went to her house as usual. We knocked and nobody answered. So we thought she wasn't at home and rejoiced at the fact that there was no class that day. So we went to their terrace and started laughing and joking loudly (not to mention running) and then we returned home. The next day she came to our house and told my mom, very angrily of course, that we had bunked class. (bunk? We didn't do it on purpose okay) And she narrated in full detail everything she heard us say in the terrace and let me tell you this-we weren't exactly talking anything good about her or anybody else as a matter of fact. The rest, as they say, is history. Needless to say we never went there again.

3) When I was about 7 my mom enrolled me in some workshop that dealt with matters 7 year olds could not comprehend. I couldn't anyway. The lady was talking about time and stuff and how it was always moving and doesn't stop for anyone (common workshop material I guess). She asked the gathering, numbering 1000, if we had any questions. So I innocently asked her ”maam doesn't time stop when you take the batteries out of the clock? ”(I was a special kid. A weird kind of special kid). Yes. I actually said this in front of 100 kids and their parents (not to mention my parents). Of course everyone started pointing and laughing and the speaker was looking daggers at me(I guess I had ruined her ‘beautiful presentation’).

Well that’s all. So now I shall go to a corner and cry silently reviewing and exaggerating all the above moments and you can slap your thighs ,roll on the floor with tears in your eyes(I’m pretty sure they’re not sympathy tears)  and laugh till your sides ache. And for those kindred souls who have experienced/will be experiencing such ‘special moments’ I feel your pain. And I assure you if you write a blog post about that I will be the first one to read it and laugh heartily.